1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus having a manual feeding tray capable of being closed with transfer sheet sheets placed thereon.
2. Description of Related Art
An image forming apparatus includes a feeding cassette and a manual feeding tray as a sheet feeding means. The feeding cassette is arranged to be drawn from the body of the image forming apparatus. Transfer sheets are placed in the cassette, while the feeding cassette is drawn from the body of the image forming apparatus. When the feeding tray is placed in the body of an image forming apparatus the transfer sheets are ready for feeding. An image forming apparatus, in general, has plural feeding cassettes, each of which can store different sizes of paper sheet.
The manual feeding tray is rotatably attached on the side panel of the image forming apparatus by a hinge, etc. so that the manual feeding tray can be opened and closed. The manual feeding tray is constructed so that when using, the manual feeding tray is opened and transfer sheets are placed thereon; when not using, the manual feeding tray can be retracted. The transfer sheet placed on of the manual feeding tray is lifted up by a lifting board until the front end portion of the transfer sheet reaches to a pick-up roller and fed into the image forming apparatus by being in contact with a pick-up roller. There are two kinds of lifting board. One is a lifting board which is stored together with the manual feeding tray being rotated when the manual feeding tray is stored (For example, referring to Patent Reference 1), and another is a lifting board which is attached to the body of the image forming apparatus and it does not move with the open-close operation of manual feeding tray.
When forming images, an appropriate size of a transfer sheet is selected from either a feeding cassette or a manual feeding tray based on the size of a manuscript, a magnification and a size specified from an operation section.
(Patent Reference No. 1) FIGS. 3 and 4 in Japanese Patent Open to Public, Tokkai 2001-146343.
On the other hand, among various kinds of image forming apparatus, there is an image forming apparatus having a manual feeding tray attached on a side door of the image forming apparatus, which is used for processes such as paper jam and/or maintenances.
In the image forming apparatus having a manual feeding tray on the side door, it is necessary to close the manual feeding tray when opening the door to fix paper-jam and/or to conduct maintenances. Because when trying to open the door with the manual feeding tray left open, the manual feeding tray hits a wall, etc. and the door cannot be fully opened. There is a problem that it is not easy to conduct a paper jam process to remove jammed paper and/or maintenances when the door cannot be fully open due to the fact that the manual feeding tray becomes an obstacle. In order to make it possible to fully open the door, an image forming apparatus has to be installed by taking account of the space necessary for the door opening.
In the image forming apparatus of Patent Reference No. 1, it is impossible to close the manual feeding tray with transfer sheet thereon since there is no space to store the transfer sheet in the manual feeding tray in a case of a certain model of image forming apparatus. Even though it is possible to close the manual feeding tray, the transfer sheet gets damaged. In an image forming apparatus having the lifting board therein, when the manual feeding tray is closed, the transfer sheet is bent and curled at the portion where the lifting board is in contact with the transfer sheet. Accordingly, when conducting a process to remove jammed papers and/or execute maintenances, before closing the manual feeding tray, transfer sheets on the manual feeding tray should be removed and after opening the manual feeding tray, the transfer sheets should be placed back on the manual feeding tray. In other words, there is a problem that it takes time and efforts to conduct additional works other than a paper jam processing and/or maintenance.
The object of the present invention is to provide a manual feeding tray capable to be closed with transfer sheet thereon.